Future Tense
by unfold
Summary: Jess lays out their future for Rory. One parter.


**A/N: I suppose this is pretty self explanatory. Some Elliott Smith lyrics that I heard while writing this that sort of fit the whole Rory/Jess relationship: _The first time I saw you, I knew it would never last. I'm not half what I wish I was. I'm so angry. I don't think it will ever pass. And I was bad news for you just because I never meant to hurt you. _Onwards.**

Here, I'll tell you how it ends.

Now that I'm gone, you'll get over it. For one, I never mattered much anyway. I was merely an experiment, something new. I was your sophomore slump, sloppy seconds, etc. I was someone to save you from the boredom you were suffering from with him. So, you'll move on. It won't hurt for long. Maybe a day or two after you've realized that I've gone for good. I guarantee by the third day, you'll see the previous two days as stupid and a waste of time. You'll throw out your Hemingway. You'll stop listening to loud punk music. Not because these things remind you of me, but because you never liked them anyway.

This doesn't mean you'll forget about me. No, quite the contrary, I will haunt you for months. You won't understand it. After all, I meant hardly a thing to you. That's what you'll keep telling yourself, whenever you find your mind wandering towards thoughts of me. These will be fleeting thoughts. You will suddenly be wondering where I am, what I'm doing, if I've gotten myself together yet. But, you will push these from your head and focus on other things, studying or Dean.

In the time that I'm gone, I will reevaluate my life. Not because of you, necessarily, but because of the sudden realization that I am not who I want to be. I will be all at once faced with every mistake I have ever made in my life. I will notice how quickly all of my relationships deteriorate and I will hate it. I'll move back to New York and get a job. I won't go to school because I can't afford it and can't ask Luke for any more favors. I'll think about the future, but it will look dismal so I'll stick with the here and now.

I will throw myself recklessly into relationships. I will find myself in love with every woman that I see. Because I have become addicted to the feeling of closeness, because you have opened some sort of floodgate within me. I will search for traces of you in each one of these women. There will be Laura who has your dark hair and your small hands, but her eyes are black and she talks loudly. She'll leave me because she thinks there's someone else. There will be Sam who has your blue eyes and your intelligence, but she won't speak her mind and her hair is too light. She will also leave me because she thinks there's someone else. In addition to these will be, Clare and Rachel and Anna, all leaving me for similar reasons.

A reason to return to Stars Hollow will materialize and I'll get on a bus. By now, I will love you in the purest way possible. I will want nothing more than to support you, protect you, trust you. All of these things I could never do before, I will feel able to do now. The time away from you will have ignited something inside of me. I will want you more than I ever wanted you before.

When I arrive back in town, I'll search for you everywhere. I will deny that you're the reason I'm there. I will pretend that you mean nothing. I won't let on that I have been pining for a year. And I'll know that you are not pining for me. You said it yourself. Your mother will confront me. This will not surprise me. I expected her to say something. Secretly, it will fill me with some odd sense of warmth to see her so protective of you, to see that you have someone who loves you that much.

There will be so many things that I need to say to you, but whenever I see you, I will run. Old habits die hard. I'll be afraid. I won't know how you'll react to my being there. But, before I leave, I will se you once more and you will stop me from running. We will both stop running from one another. I will look at you. Your hair will be different. You will be different. When you ask me what I have to say, everything I had been thinking will suddenly slip from my mind. The only words I will be able to form are, "I love you." And then I will run again. I won't want to hear your response, I will be certain that you hate me or at least don't love me.

This won't be the last of me, though. Yet another reason will arise and I will once again find myself back in Stars Hollow. I will be bitter, now. I had expected you to contact me, maybe. I thought you would think about what I had said to you and realize something, anything. I'll have just assumed you would come to your senses.

I will avoid you for the most part. I will avoid your mother, too. Luke will try to give me advice, though we both know it's hopeless. We are similar in that way. The way that we have both been stuck on women for years with seemingly no chance.

This time I will feel empowered, somehow. I will have convinced myself that we are made for each other, that we are puzzle pieces. I will be so confident in this that I will be blind to anything else. It will seem obvious and I'll be sure that you know it too.

I'll see you with him and it will drive me mad with jealousy, desperation. You will be smiling until you see me and this will hurt more than the fact that he is there. But, he'll leave and you'll let me into your room. I won't know what to say anymore. All of my logic will have been replaced with something much stronger. And I'll ask you tocome away with me and it won't bother me how clichéd that proposition is, because I'll mean it. I'll tell you that if nothing else, we belong together. I won't be myself. I will beg. I will be someone completely different.

You'll cry and there will be a stinging pain going through my entire body as you shake your head. But, I've changed, you can count on me. I'll tell you these things. I'll try to make you see that I am not seventeen anymore. I'll show you. I promise, I'll show you. But, it won't matter. In the end, I mean nothing to you. _No_ will be the only word you can form that night. It will ring in my ears for days, weeks, maybe months.

I will walk away from you. I will drive back to the city, thinking that I had been wrong about everything. I will walk back to my apartment, knowing I had gone about it all wrong, cursing him for being there that night. For the first time, I was thinking with my heart and this is where it got me.

The days that follow will be horrible. I will listen for footsteps in the hall, imagining that you changed your mind after having a few days to think about it. I will answer my phone too eagerly and it will never be you on the other end. And once I get past this pseudo grieving period, I will move on. I will try to be stronger. I will think that if it was meant to happen, it would have happened. And years from now, I won't think of you. If I do, it will be a passing thought when I am talking to Luke or when I come across a book that belonged to you. And, maybe, I'll see you at some point in the future, but I will try not to be bitter. Years from now, you will be a fleeting memory of a formative sort of love.


End file.
